The present invention generally relates to an egg-based material. Additionally, the present invention relates to a cooked egg-based food product that exhibits freeze/thaw stability upon being frozen and reheated.
Eggs, especially eggs produced by chickens, are a main food staple in the diets of many people. Eggs are often used as a main course for breakfast and may be prepared in a variety of ways. For example, eggs may be scrambled, fried, boiled, and poached. Cooked eggs are nutritious and contain significant amounts of beneficial protein.
One challenge is cooked eggs traditionally cannot be held or stored for extended periods of time after being cooked while maintaining the desirable organoleptic properties of freshly cooked eggs. When eggs are heated during cooking, the proteins within the eggs form a coagulated mass of protein. Besides containing coagulable proteins, eggs typically contain between about 75 weight percent and about 80 weight percent water, based on the total weight of the eggs. Much of this water contained in eggs prior to cooking is free water that is not chemically bound to any particular component of the eggs. When eggs are heated during cooking, at least some of this free water is trapped within the coagulated mass of protein.
When cooked eggs containing the coagulated mass of proteins are frozen, the free water trapped within the coagulated mass forms ice crystals. When the frozen eggs are thawed and the ice crystals trapped within the coagulated mass thaw along with the coagulated mass, much of the free water resulting from thawing of the ice crystals typically does not remain entrapped within the coagulated mass. Instead, free water resulting from thawing of the ice crystals formerly entrapped within the frozen coagulated mass has a tendency to separate and “sweep” away from the thawed coagulated mass.
Loss of the entrapped free water upon thawing of the frozen cooked eggs adversely affects the organoleptic properties of the thawed coagulated mass. Loss of entrapped free water from the thawed cooked egg tends to cause the thawed coagulated mass to become tough, chewy, and less palatable to human beings. The thawed coagulated mass may also be visually unappealing because of the visible escape of free water from the thawed coagulated mass.
One potential approach to solving the problem of free water escape from the thawed coagulated mass entails removing moisture from raw eggs prior to cooking the eggs. If all of the free water is removed from raw eggs, only egg solids, possibly with some bound amount of water, remains. Egg solids, also known as powdered eggs, that remain following free water removal from raw eggs have a long shelf life and may be reconstituted by combining the egg solids with water. However, the reconstituted eggs, upon heating to cook and form the coagulated mass, do not have the same organoleptic properties, such as taste, texture, or visual appearance, of freshly cooked eggs formed by cooking raw eggs that have not been subjected to moisture removal. Consequently, a need continues to exist for a better solution to the problem of free water escape from the thawed form of frozen, previously-cooked eggs and similarly from the thawed form of frozen, previously-cooked egg-based products.